Description

A fascinating history of the world's changing climate, and how it has shaped our civilization Humanity evolved in an Ice Age in which glaciers covered much of the world. But starting about 15,000 years ago, temperatures began to climb. Civilization and all of recorded history occurred in this warm period, the era known as the Holocene - the long summer of the human species. In The Long Summer, Brian Fagan brings us the first detailed record of climate change during these 15,000 years of warming, and shows how this climate change gave rise to civilization. A thousand-year chill led people in the Near East to take up the cultivation of plant foods; a catastrophic flood drove settlers to inhabit Europe; the drying of the Sahara forced its inhabitants to live along the banks of the Nile; and increased rainfall in East Africa provoked the bubonic plague. The Long Summer illuminates for the first time the centuries-long pattern of human adaptation to the demands and challenges of an ever-changing climate - challenges that are still with us today.show more

About Brian Fagan

Brian Fagan is one of the world's leading archaeological writers, and is author of Floods, Famines, and Emperors and The Little Ice Age and the editor of The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.show more

Review quote

"Extremely readable and thought-provoking, this book should appeal to many people, including those concerned with global warming and its implications for the future." Library Journal"show more